


The Deep End

by Lafayette1777



Category: Arctic Monkeys, British Singers RPF, Indie Music RPF, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Casual Relationship, France - Freeform, Freckles, M/M, angsty with some fluff, inconveniently falling in love, lyrics, pent up emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4292304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>In which the words to ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ are not Alex’s, but Miles’s.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deep End

**Author's Note:**

> What? I wrote a one-shot that's not all despair and unhappiness? I don't even know who I am anymore.   
> Anyways, Sunday night I went to bed early, and ended up staring at the ceiling for two hours as I dissolved into panic over the next year of my life. But, this idea also came to me, so it wasn't a complete waste.   
> Enjoy!

Thursday night. Miles couldn’t say the exact date, but he knows it’s somewhere around mid April, or maybe early May. Something about touring tends to wrinkle the fabric of things, distort how time flows and pauses, in a way that’s always been both pleasant and unnerving. 

It’s Thursday night, and Miles is watching, as he has a tendency to do. 

He hasn’t the faintest idea what day of the month it is, but he _is_ certain how many freckles dot Alex’s back. He’d catalogued them all, back in the old days, and though he supposes some may have been added in the interim, he doubts any significant change has been made. Alex always has been a bit of an indoor person. 

Now, though, he cranes his neck from where he sits on the end of a plush hotel double bed, squinting at Alex’s bare back. It’s shrouded partly by the half closed bathroom door, just a sliver of skin visible, pale under the fluorescent light. Intermittently, Miles hears the sound of the water running - Alex brushing his teeth, or whatever else it is he does before bed. 

Miles pitches backwards, colliding with the pristine white of the duvet, arms spread wide. Alex appears a few minutes later, hair natural and still a bit damp from a shower. He tosses a bottle of shaving cream in the general direction of his carry-all and turns to Miles, who is shifting over to make room for him on the bed. 

Alex slides in beside him, and for a moment all they do is look at each other. Again, Miles is watching; the swivel of Alex’s eyes over his lips, the twitch of the scar beneath his eyebrow when he blinks, the darting out of his tongue to moisten his lips. Miles reaches out to link their fingers, and he almost intends it to stop there. 

Of course, it doesn’t. 

A moment later, Alex’s tongue is tracing his bottom lip, their lips moving languidly together in a way that suggests that they have more time than they do. Miles’s eyes are still closed when Alex pulls away and murmurs, a little bashfully, “S’been a while since we’ve done that.”

Miles opens his eyes, and when the side of his mouth curls up slightly, so does Alex’s. “What did you expect?”

Really, it was rather predictable - ending up in this room together, on the eve of a show like tomorrow’s. And yet they’re both still here. On the bedside table, Miles’s phone is plugged into a pair of portable speakers, an Elmore James tune leaking out. He may not be much a fan of digital music, but he knows that on tour you can’t always be lugging around your record collection. 

“This tune always makes me think of you somehow,” Miles sighs, lips still sinfully close to Alex’s. 

Alex, this time, is the one to initiate the kiss. The squeeze he gives Miles’s fingers is his only warning before their mouths are together again, gradually growing less and less chaste. Familiar rhythms are cropping up again, and though a great many things have changed since that first trip to France, Alex’s lips haven’t. 

When they pull away, Miles’s cheeks are that rosy shade he has a hard time recreating with anyone else. Alex’s hot breath rebounds off his collar bone. “L’Olympia tomorrow,” Alex sighs. He’s putting off sleep, knowing that when he does succumb to it, it’ll be fitful and restless. Stress dreams, in every shape and form. 

And if staying awake with him is the only help Miles can offer, then it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make. 

m m m

This time, Miles can honestly say he doesn’t know what day of the week it is. 

It hardly matters, anyways. The weekend means nothing to him. Monday is an equally abstract concept. For that, he knows he’s fortunate. The fog of Sunday night has no effect on him, no sense of foreboding, not anymore. Sometimes, though, he finds himself pining for such restraints. Feeling separate from so much of the rest of the adult world isn’t always something that sits well in his gut. 

But, regardless, it’s early evening, and under the ambient lighting of someone’s back garden he sips at a G &T and prowls the edges. It’s too early to get proper sloshed and too late to back out of the gathering all together. And the thick air so characteristic of the season has his cheetah print button-up sticking to him, creating a continuous low level of discomfort. 

He’s sighing his displeasure at a lone dogwood tree when it happens. 

Something catches his eye.

It’s Alex. Always has been. Maybe it’s the light, or a shift in pose, or nothing at all. He’s fairly sure that at this moment, it’s not actually about details. But something shifts. Whatever it is, it was probably only a matter of time. 

“Oh, fuck,” Miles murmurs when he sees him, standing on a patio across the yard and talking in amiable shyness with some vaguely familiar looking producer. Miles’s heart nearly stops right then and there, and suddenly he’s caught between elation and nausea. The grip on his drink turns his knuckles white. 

He’s in deep.

It’s possible he has been for a while. Maybe it’s always been more than casual kisses and casual fucks and casual affection. He feels a little sick at the realization. He’s in trouble. 

Alex finally catches his stare. He tilts his head inquisitively, and surely it’s not lost on him the way the color in Miles’s cheeks spreads across the entirety of his exposed skin. Miles manages to jerk a thumb at the exit and Alex makes his excuses to the host without a second thought before following him out to the street. 

Miles knows better than to say anything. They’ve said _I love you_ thousands of times before but today it’d be different, and surely Alex would notice. “Alright?” Alex asks, expression a mix of concern and amusement at Miles’s sudden lack of verbosity. 

Miles nods dazedly and begins to lead the way back towards his flat. 

Once inside, he waits only long enough to get out of his sweat dampened suit jacket before turning around kissing Alex senseless. They stumble toward the bedroom and, of course, end up fucking, because that’s why Alex is here, why his girlfriend’s still in America. But this time Miles can tell it’s different, at least on his end, because when they’re finished and Alex gets up to head toward the guest room in that ridiculous way of his, Miles finds his own lips moving. 

“Hey.”

Alex stops before he reaches the threshold and looks back at him. 

“Was sorta hoping you’d stay,” Miles murmurs, avoiding eye contact. But he’s given himself away, and he knows it. Alex is perceptive enough to realize something has changed, even if he may not understand its nature.

But he crawls back in next to Miles anyway, sweaty skin against sweaty skin. 

m m m

“So what happened?”

Alex’s eyes are on the cement, voice uncertain. He’s never been keen on talking about these sorts of things, but he must feel inclined to ask out of politeness, or maybe just a desire to offer sympathy. Miles, sitting in a patch of sunlight to his left, purses his lips at Alex’s discomfort. The cerulean of the pool glimmers in his peripheral vision. 

Miles shrugs, and the gesture succeeds in getting Alex to look up at him. 

“That’s it?” Alex asks, brow furrowing. Alex, always one for introspection, can’t imagine that Miles isn’t sitting on as much angst as he is. Of course, that’s not quite true - even beyond the recent breakup, Miles is drowning in his own thoughts, his own jumbled collection of desires, and a great many of them happen to be Alex’s fault. 

“Too busy being yours, I s’pose,” Miles lets slip, and regrets it immediately. It hadn’t sounded as flirty and light as he’d intended it, and the laugh he follows it with is equally unsatisfying. 

Alex’s head lifts up abruptly, but he seems to accept the plea in Miles’s eyes and laughs along half-heartedly. 

“Simmer down, you,” Alex says, heaving himself off the pool chair and to his feet. His eyes still contain a hint of mirth, but his voice isn’t quite friendly. He sheds his t-shirt and Miles’s eyes swivel to those familiar freckles just before Alex makes a clumsy dive into the pool at their feet, leaving Miles’s Hawaiian print shirt speckled with drops of chlorinated water no longer pleasantly azure. 

m m m

Alex is bent awkwardly beneath the hood of his car when Miles appears in the garage, five o’clock whiskey in hand. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Miles murmurs.

“S’alright. I dunno what I’m doing anyway,” Alex replies, wiping a greasy hand on his jeans. 

Miles has come out to say goodbye - he’s supposed to be heading back to London tonight, back to real life, or at least his own verisimilitude of it. But the words are sticking in his throat now that Alex has his eyes on him. 

“Ready to go?” Alex motions toward the car, where Miles’s things are already waiting in the boot. Alex will be driving him to the airport, but real goodbyes never really happen there. Miles is fairly sure he’s never said anything properly sincere in a departure lounge, of which he’s seen many. So he knows he needs to get it out now if he’s ever going to. 

“Yeah,” he answers lamely. 

Alex heads toward the driver’s side and Miles finishes off his drink before leaving the glass on the stairs leading back up the house. Still feeling the burn in his throat, he says, “Hey, Al?”

Alex pauses in opening the door, and Miles makes the mistake of meeting his eyes over the car between them. “Do you ever...I dunno…” He shakes his head at his own incoherency. “I always feel like I’m on the cusp of trying to kiss you, or summat. Always on the verge.” 

Alex frowns, but doesn’t reply. 

“I know it don’t make sense,” Miles says quickly. “Let’s just go, yeah?”

He climbs into the passenger seat and a moment later Alex slides in beside him, but he doesn’t reach for the ignition immediately. His hand briefly settles on the gear shift, but a moment later he’s slipping his fingers under Miles’s chin and Miles doesn’t have time to react before their lips are pressed together and it’s as wonderful and all consuming as it’s ever been. His eyes close and he lets instinct take over, until Alex pulls away and murmurs, “Do you still feel like you’re on the cusp now?”

Miles pauses a moment, but nods. 

He maintains loaded eye contact, but keeps his lips tightly together. He can’t say anything if he intends to maintain the facade he’s been grasping onto since that night in the garden. But he’s on the cusp now of spewing forth every thought and feeling he’s ever had and it’s all he can do to swallow it all down, to not ruin it all before it’s even become anything. 

Alex looks disappointed, but doesn’t push further. He turns his attention toward the wheel, and by the time they’re on the highway he’s got his sunglasses on and has become unreachable. Miles opens the window and lets the hot desert hair blow his hair into appalling shapes. 

In the drop off lane, once he’s got his suitcases out of the back and they’re standing on the curb, Alex hugs him tightly. He’s not sure when they’ll see each other again. He’s never really sure, with this life. Miles embraces him tightly in return and hopes it’ll be enough. 

“Call me when you get home,” Alex says, smile melancholy. 

“Might wait until I’ve had a few first.” Miles smirks convincingly, even if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Long flight and all.”

“Alright.” Alex kisses his cheek one more time and ducks back into the car as traffic cop waves him forward. 

Miles is ashamed to say he watches until Alex’s tail lights are out of sight. 

m m m

Alex has been up to something, Miles knows that much, but this is beyond anything he ever expected. 

Miles can always tell when Alex has been writing, even if they’re on separate continents. It’s something in his voice. And for a few months now their occasional phone conversations have been enough to clue Miles into the fact that new material is on its way, even if Alex never says anything so explicit. 

_I need you to hear something._

Miles gets the text on a rainy Tuesday, as he waits in line to buy cigarettes and Hobnobs. _Sure, la,_ he replies, without a second thought. He’d been expecting this any day now. The first single is always the hardest to be sure of, and he knows he’s an integral part of the network of friends that Alex goes to for reassurance. 

_It’s big. Check your email._

Back in his flat, Miles pulls out his laptop, plugs in the auxiliary speakers, and opens the file Alex has sent him. The caption says only “Do I Wanna Know?”, and he can only assume that’s what Alex has taken to calling it. 

He lays back on his couch, lights up a cigarette, and lets it play. 

Three or four plays later, his eyes are wet and he’s reaching blindly for his mobile. 

“Do you like it?” is the first thing out of Alex’s mouth, and Miles swallows thickly a few times before he can properly reply.

“I love it,” he says quietly, not trusting his voice at a louder volume. “I fucking love it.”

“It’s for you,” Alex says, and Miles has no trouble imagining the blush on his cheeks from across the globe. “I dunno if you remember...I’ve been writing things down for a while. It just sort of...came together.”

“I remember,” Miles replies, and then bites hard on the inside of his cheek. He breathes, “Christ, Alex, I fucking love it. I can’t say it enough.”

Alex laughs, an ethereal thing, both excited and nervous. “Come visit me,” he says unexpectedly, and Miles nods furiously before he realizes Alex can’t see him. 

“M’already on me way,” he says quickly, and seals it with a wet laugh. 

m m m

One moment “Do I Wanna Know?” is playing in the silence of Miles’s flat and the next moment it’s playing everywhere. When Alex’s message had said _it’s big_ , Miles had assumed he meant the size of the audio file, but maybe he’d known even then that it’d end up as more than that. 

“I think you own America now,” Miles laughs.

“And all it cost us is one hit single.” Alex smirks. 

“Finally broken through the glass ceiling.” Miles is lolling against his shoulder, buzzed on things both quantifiable and unquantifiable. “Rock n’ Roll has risen again!” He raises his arms wildly in emphasis, then falls back into Alex’s lap. Alex grins down at him, carding a hand through his hair at the same time. There’s some sitcom rerun playing on the telly, injecting a laugh track into the room every few seconds, giving everything an air of joviality. They grin stupidly at each other, until finally Miles slings an arm around Alex’s neck and hauls himself up until their lips meet. The first kiss of a new era. 

He still doesn’t really know what they are. He can’t imagine he ever will. He’s been on the cusp for years, and if he still is, so be it. So be it, as long as he can take solace in the fact that the song playing on the radio is a love note addressed to him. 

And, for now, that’s enough.


End file.
